and on the same night sent engineers to trace out a new line of defences in his rear, to which, it seems, he already contemplated the probability of being forced to retire.  Why he came to take this depressed view of the situation of affairs, it is difficult to say.  One of General Sedgwick’s corps reached him on this night, and his force at Chancellorsville still amounted to between ninety and one hundred thousand men, about thrice that of Lee.  No decisive trial of strength had yet taken place between the two armies; and yet the larger force was constructing defences in rear to protect them from the smaller—­a circumstance not tending, it would seem, to greatly encourage the troops whose commander was thus providing for a safe retreat.

The subsequent order to General Sedgwick to march up from Fredericksburg and assail Lee’s right was judicious, and really saved the army from a great disaster.  Lee was about to follow up the discouraged forces of General Hooker as they fell back toward the river; and, as the Southern army was flushed with victory, the surrender of the great body might have ensued.  This possible result was prevented by the flank movement of General Sedgwick, and some gratitude for assistance so important from his able lieutenant would have seemed natural and graceful in General Hooker.  This view of the subject does not seem, however, to have been taken by the Federal commander.  He subsequently charged the defeat of Chancellorsville upon General Sedgwick, who he declared had “failed in a prompt compliance with his orders."[1] The facts do not bear out this charge, as the reader has seen.  General Sedgwick received the order toward midnight on Saturday, and, at eleven o’clock on Sunday morning, had passed over that stubborn “stone wall” which, in the battle of the preceding December, General Hooker’s column had not even been able to reach; had stormed Marye’s Hill, which General Hooker had described, in vindication of his own failure to carry the position, as “masonry,” “a fortification,” and “a mountain of rock;” and had marched thereafter so promptly as to force Lee, in his own defence, to arrest the second advance upon the Federal main body, and divert a considerable force to meet the attack on his flank.

[Footnote 1:  General Hooker in Report of the Committee on the Conduct of the War, Part I., page 130.  This great collection is a valuable repository of historic details, and contains the explanation of many interesting questions.]

After the repulse of General Sedgwick, and his retreat across the Rappahannock, General Hooker seems to have been completely discouraged, and hastened to put the river between himself and Lee.  His losses in the battles of Saturday and Sunday had amounted to seventeen thousand one hundred and ninety-seven killed and wounded and missing, fourteen pieces of artillery, and twenty thousand stand of arms.  The Confederate loss was ten thousand two hundred and eighty-one.  Contrary to the ordinary course of things the assailing force had lost a less number of men than that assailed.